[escepticos] Noticia en Nature

["A.T." <torresad@...>]

La noticia está aquí, y me ha preocupado un poquiño: 
http://www.nature.com/nsu/040119/040119-7.html

La copio a continuación. No tengo tiempo de traducirla, lo siento:


 Telepathy debate hits London

Audience charmed by the paranormal.

22 January 2004

John Whitfield

/This story is from the news section of the journal/ Nature

Scientists tend to steer clear of public debates with advocates of the 
paranormal. And judging from the response of a London audience to a rare 
example of such a head-to-head conflict last week, they are wise to do so.

Lewis Wolpert, a developmental biologist at University College London, 
made the case against the existence of telepathy at a debate at the 
Royal Society of Arts (RSA) in London on 15 January. Rupert Sheldrake, a 
former biochemist and plant physiologist at the University of Cambridge 
who has taken up parapsychology, argued in its favour. And most of the 
200-strong audience seemed to agree with him.

Wolpert is one of Britain's best-known public spokesmen for science. But 
few members of the audience seemed to be swayed by his arguments.

Sheldrake, who moved beyond the scientific pale in the early 1980s by 
claiming that ideas and forms can spread by a mysterious force he called 
morphic resonance, kicked off the debate.

He presented the results of tests of extrasensory perception, together 
with his own research on whether people know who is going to phone or 
e-mail them, on whether dogs know when their owners are coming home, and 
on the allegedly telepathic bond between a New York woman and her 
parrot. "Billions of perfectly rational people believe that they have 
had these experiences," he said.

Wolpert countered that telepathy was "pathological science", based on 
tiny, unrepeatable effects backed up by fantastic theories and an ad hoc 
response to criticism. "The blunt fact is that there's no persuasive 
evidence for it," he said. "An open mind is a very bad thing - 
everything falls out."

For Ann Blaber, who works in children's music and was undecided on the 
subject, Sheldrake was the more convincing. "You can't just dismiss all 
the evidence for telepathy out of hand," she said. Her view was 
reflected by many in the audience, who variously accused Wolpert of "not 
knowing the evidence" and being "unscientific".

In staging the debate, the RSA joins a growing list of London 
organizations taking a novel approach to science communication^1 
<http://www.nature.com/nsu/nsu_pf/040119/040119-7.html#b1>. "We want to 
provide a platform for controversial subjects," says Liz Winder, head of 
lectures at the RSA.

	
References

  1. Giles, J. Museum breaks mould in attempts to lure reluctant
     visitors . */Nature/*, *426,* 6, doi:10.1038/426006a (2003).